India Travel - St. Thomas without a Doubt

Tracing the life of Doubting Thomas

I am standing in a cramped, musty cave. The gloom is pierced by a shaft of sunlight filtering through a narrow aperture at one end of the cave, and the ray rests on what looks like a large rough handprint on the rock floor. I try to imagine a man living here, almost two thousand years ago: a fugitive in hiding from enemies who are seeking to kill him because his miraculous healing powers have converted large numbers of the local populace to his faith. He speaks of a strange new religion whose leader was crucified because of his radical religious teachings.

If I am to believe the inscriptions in the chapel built above the cave, this was once the abode of St. Thomas, the Apostle - the “Doubting Thomas” of the Gospels - whose handprint on the rock floor has endured through the centuries.

The split in the rock face was his escape route as he fled his murderous pursuers, scrambling his way through tropical undergrowth to a rocky hillock approximately two miles away from the cave, where he fell to the ground in exhaustion-and where he was finally stabbed to death. The site of his martyrdom is marked by a church built on the hill which now bears his name, “St. Thomas’s Mount”.

The astonishing thing is not so much the account of St. Thomas’ martyrdom, but the fact that he should have lived in here at all-in what was then a small village on the east coast of the Indian peninsula-a very long way off from his native Palestine.

Documentary evidence indicates that active trading between the Middle East and the Malabar Coast of India was in existence as far back as the first century, B.C. It is therefore theoretically possible that St. Thomas could have crossed the Arabian Sea aboard an Arab dhow. Although no verifiable records attest to his arrival on the shores of India, today’s Malabar Christians of Kerala staunchly insist that their community was founded by the St. Thomas the Apostle in 56 AD.

After spending ten years on the Malabar Coast, he is said to have then travelled eastwards, across the Deccan plateau, arriving in Mylapore (near Chennai) in 68 AD. The cave at “Little Mount” (“Chinnamalai” to the locals) was where he preached and lived in hiding until 72 AD.

The original altar in the Chapel (built over the cave) was consecrated in 1551, but close by is a newer circular church building, erected in 1971 in commemoration of the 19th centenary of the Apostle’s martyrdom. Along the flank of Little Mount are several sugary looking tableaux, notably one depicting a Jesus-like figure preaching to a conglomeration of Hindu Brahmin priests and sari-clad women, a patronizing, if not tactless, display of Christian missionary zeal. Notwithstanding that, a marble pieta further up the hillside, although chipped by time and weather, is a singularly lovely work of art.

Up the hill, behind the Chapel is a flat rock, where St. Thomas is said to have preached the gospel, and a guide ushers me into a concrete structure built over the original rock-altar. He points out a thin stream running through a crack in the rock-face. “This is a miraculous spring,” he asserts. “St. Thomas struck the rock, and the water gushed out.”

The spring reputedly has curative powers and according to my guide, many believers still visit the shrine to partake of its healing properties. The water looks anything but medicinal, and while admiring the faith of St. Thomas’ followers, I decline my guide’s offer to “take a sip”.

Here, too, is a hump of rock, which is purported to bear the footprint of St. Thomas. If so, it is distorted beyond recognition, and my credibility is further strained by the fact that unless St. Thomas was twenty feet tall, no footprint could possibly be that size. My guide is unfazed. “The rock has expanded to three times its original dimensions due to the sun beating down on it for centuries,” he says.

Much larger than the buildings at “Little Mount” is the Our Lady of Expectation Church at St. Thomas Mount, built by the Portuguese in 1547 to mark the spot where St. Thomas was killed in AD 72. A piece of bone, unearthed while excavating the foundations, reinforced the belief that this was indeed the site of the Apostle’s martyrdom, and the relic is now enshrined within the base of a cross set near the altar.

Also dug up at the same time, was a bloodstained stone cross, which the Apostle is said to have been clutching as he was stabbed to death. The cross reputedly oozed blood annually on December 18th through the years 1551 to 1704. Among the other treasures housed in the Church is a depiction of the Virgin Mary, one of seven paintings attributed to St. Luke which, according to its inscription, was brought to India by St. Thomas.

On my way out of the Church, I pause to watch a young Indian couple light a candle at the side of the altar. Their faces are rapt. Unlike “Doubting Thomas” two millennia earlier, and myself today, they have no need to probe below the flesh of legend and feel the bone of fact. They merely believe. And perhaps that’s all that really counts.

If you go St. Thomas Mount:

Little Mount, known locally as Chinnamalai, lies about 6 miles southeast of Chennai’s city centre. St. Thomas Mount “Our Lady of Expectation” Church (not to be confused with San Thome Cathedral in Mylapore which enshrines the tomb of the Apostle) is on a hillock about 8 miles south west of Chennai, and its 134 steps are flanked by statues depicting the Stations of the Cross. For less energetic visitors like me, a motor road provides easier accessibility. Local buses from the city centre run on a regular basis to both sites.

Author: Margaret Deefholts